Pure Geekness

Weekly Geek Trivia

By Hmsbeefnuts

Week three of my stint, and damn it, Geeky Gem come back!!! Hmm, keep it together Beefnuts, just one more week to go, one more week….just one more, one more after this one. Right, so last week we looked at the amazing super fantastic Ray Harryhausen, and his wonderful mind creations. This week, I will be telling you about some sit-com facts that you probably don’t know about, if you do, umm, I apologise. If you have not seen these comedy masterpieces, go and check them out please, if you don’t you are missing out on so much awesomeness, that Harryhausen himself would struggle to animate it, whatever that means… Anyway, on to the facts!!!

Community

Danny Pudi, the actor who plays Abed is actually half Polish, and can speak the language fluently, I bet you didn’t know that!

Arrested Development

Tobias Funke’s ‘nevernude’ affliction, is a real thing. Known as gymnophobia, it is the fear of nude bodies.

The Office’s own Dwight Schrute, Rainn Wilson, lost out to Will Arnett over the role of Gob.

The Office (US)

Steve Carell started to watch the British version of the show, only to stop a few minutes in, he didn’t want Ricky Gervais’ performance to influence his. John Krasinski, who plays Jim, however, watched it all and loved it.

During the writers strike in 2007, the show had to go on hiatus as WGA member Steve Carell refused to cross picket lines. Carell called in sick to his network bosses saying he had a nasty case of ‘enlarged balls’ and couldn’t come in.

Seinfeld

Michael Richards, who played Kramer, always wore clothes one size too big, in order to appear laid back. Jason Alexander, who played George, however, wore outfits one size too small, in order to make him look uncool and slightly uncomfortable.

In one episode, Elaine dates a guy called Joel Riftkin, who shares his name with a guy involved in a notorious New York City Murder case. Elaine tries to get him to change his name. One of the suggestions is O.J. This episode was shot in 1993, a year before O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Weird.

Whilst filming the uber depressing Schindler’s List, Director Steven Spielberg has said he watched episodes of Seinfeld to cheer himself up.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

No scripts are written for any episode, instead a detailed outline is given to the cast and they improvise the dialogue. Each scene will require 7 or 8 takes on average to get, a very high amount for a tightly scheduled TV show.

In 2003 a man named Juan Catalan was arrested for a murder in Los Angeles. He repeatedly professed his innocence and asked to take a lie detector test, a request that the police denied. He also had an alibi: he swore that at the time of the murder he was at Dodger Stadium with his little girl, watching the Dodgers vs. the Braves, but his lawyer was unable to find him in any of the Dodger Vision or FOX footage he subpoenaed. However, he discovered that there was another source of crowd footage, an episode of Curb called, The Car Pool Lane, which had filmed at Dodger Stadium that night. Although Catalan did not make the final cut of the show, his lawyer was able to find him and his daughter in the out-takes, and determined from the timestamps on the tapes that Catalan could not have been the killer. When told that his show had released a wrongfully accused man from prison and a trial that could have led to the death penalty, Larry David commented, ‘I tell people that I’ve now done one decent thing in my life, albeit inadvertently’.

So there we are, another week over, and 10 more facts to cut out and keep in your Big Book of Geeky Facts. What do you mean you don’t have one of those? Why the hell am I doing this week after week if you don’t collect them all like Poke’mon? Anyway, next week, 10 more facts about He-man or something with a sword, probably Lord of the Rings, yeah Lord of the Rings, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Eating up my facts like the Nothingness in Neverending Story, it’s not easy you know…a thankless task, I only do it because I love you guys…..see you next week!!